News | March 6, 2014

Plextek RF Integration (Plextek RFI), a UK design house specialising in microwave and millimetre-wave IC design, has announced that it has been selected by Cree, one of the world’s leading innovators in GaN technology, as a preferred design resource to provide third party design services to Cree’s European foundry customers.

The commercial availability of GaN transistors has provided a sea change in achievable performance for Solid-State Power Amplifiers (SSPAs). Cree boasts a growing portfolio of discrete transistors, microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMIC), and GaN foundry services that allow customers to design their own transistors and MMICs for fabrication on Cree’s processes.

The arrangement with Plextek RFI will give Cree's European customers access to Plextek RFI’s proven design capabilities to develop their own custom GaN MMICs. In addition to providing design and layout services, Plextek RFI has sophisticated in-house test facilities that allow evaluation of MMICs both in bare die form (directly on wafer) and as packaged parts.

“We see huge growth potential for GaN in Europe. Plextek RFI’s experienced design and development team will provide a significant advantage to our European customers. We look forward to working with Plextek RFI to grow this market,” said Jeff Barner, Cree foundry services program manager.

“We’re delighted to have forged this relationship with a world leader in GaN technology such as Cree,” said Liam Devlin, CEO of Plextek RFI. “We have been seeing a steady increase in the amount of GaN MMIC design work we are taking on, and being able to provide our clients with access to one of the world’s best foundry processes will significantly enhance the service we are able to offer.”

About Plextek RF Integration
Plextek RF Integration is a UK-based design house specialising in the design and development of RFICs, MMICs and microwave/mm-wave modules. We have designed over 70 custom ICs at frequencies ranging from baseband to 100GHz and are a third party design house for GCS, TriQuint and WIN. Our designs are used in a wide range of applications from test instrumentation to infrastructure equipment and very high volume consumer wireless devices. We have in-house test facilities for both bare die (RFOW) and SMT packaged components. Our microwave and mm-wave module development activity encompasses a wide range of technologies including conventional SMT on laminate substrates, High Density Interconnect (HDI), chip and wire, thin film, thick film and LTCC. Plextek RF Integration is part of the Plextek Group. For more information, visit www.plextekrfi.com.